Keller watched the family speed off in the SUV. He would’ve liked to kill them, but he’d known it would’ve been too risky. Even if he could’ve overtaken Ted, either Nancy or Grant might’ve shot him. The safest plan was to wait.
After all, he still had Dan, John, Quinn, and Meredith.
With the initial shock of the holdup over, Keller trudged alongside his companions as they made their way to the end of the driveway.
“This is my fault,” Dan said to him. “We should’ve kept going. We shouldn’t have stopped…”
“There was no way you could’ve known,” Keller assured him.
“It’s not your fault, Dan,” Meredith agreed.
Dan shrugged, but his guilt was written on his face. Keller watched as Dan squeezed his daughter, taking her under his arm. Meredith and John clung to each other for support. Keller felt a ripple of jealousy. Some people didn’t realize how lucky they had it.
But they would. Soon.
When they reached the end of the driveway, Dan scooped the pistol from the dirt. It was the one he’d been carrying prior to the holdup. Keller watched him check the clip, count the bullets, and tuck it into his holster.
“No spare ammunition,” Dan lamented. “No water. No food. Nothing.”
“I can’t believe they took everything,” Meredith said. She shook her head in anger. “How are we going to defend ourselves?”
“Those pieces of garbage,” John fumed.
The group went silent.
“They didn’t get everything,” Keller piped up.
The group turned to look at him. He reached down and pulled up his right pant leg, revealing a sheathed knife. He slid it out and turned it in his hands. “My lucky knife,” he explained. “I’ve been carrying it since Texas.”
“At least it’s something,” Meredith said.
“It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.”
Dan nodded. “We’ll have to stick together. A gun and a knife won’t do us much good if we run into a horde of those things.”
The group agreed. Having reached the road, they looked left and right. There was no sign of the SUV. Brown, golden-tipped fields stretched in all directions. The sun played off the road, creating yellow mirages on the asphalt.
“How far to Abbotsville, Meredith?” Dan asked.
“By car? No more than twenty minutes. On foot, it could take a while.”
“We have a decision to make,” Dan said. He gestured toward the horizon. “We can either continue to Abbotsville, take our chances, or we can head back to the farm.”
Keller watched the rest of the group, awaiting their response. In truth, he didn’t give a shit where they went. Any place was as good as the next. The group contemplated the decision quietly, glancing at each other for guidance.
To Keller’s surprise, Quinn spoke first.
“I don’t want to go back to the Sanders’,” she said. “I want to keep going and find help, Daddy. I want to get to Abbotsville.”
“I agree, Dan,” John chimed in. “This might be our best shot at getting out of here. I understand the odds, but if we head back now, we might miss the opportunity.”
Meredith nodded. The group looked at Keller. “What do you think, Tim?” Dan asked.
“I’m in,” Keller said.
With the vote unanimous, Dan suggested doing a quick sweep of the barn and the house, ensuring they weren’t leaving any weapons or supplies behind. He led the others back up the driveway.
Keller fell in line, eyeing the group. He turned the knife in his hands.
He imagined spearing John or Dan in the neck, but he knew that’d be a waste. He’d hold off a bit longer. His heart swelled with hate at the sight of Dan with his daughter. It reminded him of the time he’d spent with his mother.
And those were memories he’d rather forget. In spite of his attempts to repress them, thoughts of his childhood came trickling back.
Keller had spent his childhood in South Dakota.
He’d grown up in a small house with his mother. He’d never known his father. Although Maria Keller had raised him, she’d barely spent time with him, preferring to leave Tim in the care of others. When she wasn’t working, she gambled away the little money she made, spending the rest on drugs and alcohol.
And so Keller spent most of his childhood in the homes of strangers, with people who doled out more abuse than care.
Even now, the worst incidents haunted him when he closed his eyes at night. When Keller was four years old, he’d been burned by a meth addict named Katrina. The woman had warned him several times not to come near the stove, but being only four years old, Keller hadn’t listened. When he’d approached to ask her a question, Katrina had grabbed his hand and stuck it against a hot metal frying pan. Afterward, she’d iced his wound and begged him not to tell his mother. He’d confessed when she’d picked him up.
Maria Keller had shrugged and told him he should’ve listened.
Another time, his mother left him with a cocaine addict named Grayson. Grayson locked Keller in a closet for an entire weekend, with no food, nothing to play with. All he was given was a bottle of water. A few minutes before his mother was due to pick him up, Grayson let Keller out. Keller’s mother had ignored his story—if she believed him, she didn’t care.
When Keller was eleven, his mother had finally abandoned him. She’d driven him to a fast food restaurant, given him three dollars for food, and sent him inside. When he’d come out, she’d been gone.
For the next seven years, Keller spent time in and out of orphanages and foster homes, receiving care that wasn’t much different from what he’d received from his mother. When he was eighteen, he was finally released from the system. By that time, he’d made a promise: he’d find his mother, and he’d pay her back for the shit life he’d had.
He finally located Maria in a motel room, strung out on drugs, half-starved. When his mother saw him, she cried, apologizing for the life of abuse and abandonment he’d endured. Then she’d asked him for money.
He’d responded by strangling her.
The police attributed Maria’s death to a drug deal gone bad, and Keller was never questioned. With his mother dead, Keller found himself just as lost and angry as he had been before.
For several years, he switched jobs, changed locations, and sought treatment for the abuse he’d suffered, but nothing satiated his desire for retribution.
Nothing felt as good as what he’d done in that hotel room.
So he decided to take out his frustrations on others instead. Although Keller had no control over what had happened in his own life, it was possible to impact the lives of others—people who had things better than him, people who took their privileged lives for granted. He’d cope with his battered childhood by harming others.
He’d take away others’ happiness to make up for what he’d lost.
The infection was a godsend, a gift for all the bullshit he’d endured. And Dan, Quinn, Meredith, and John were just another step toward vindication.